And yes, it counts towards the World Record attempt.

The Mozilla servers serving the web pages have all crashed but the files themselves are still being served.  I don’t think this is well known…

Firefox 3.0 (EN-US)

Update: Mozilla has fixed their web pages and now all of the links that, earlier today, showed version 2.0 are properly showing version 3.0.  SO GO GET IT!

I really don’t know if I have a knack for Texas Hold ‘em poker or if I’m just extremely lucky, but out of a total of about 8 rounds I’ve won 4.  They weren’t all with the same group of suckers, either.  Granted, we’re not talking about $100 buy-ins or the WSOP here.  It’s just a bunch of guys wasting time and not ever more than $20 per guy (I promise, dear).

My latest victory came on Friday night.  The lights at the Roblin Lake Dome, ahem, wouldn’t come on so our slowpitch game was canceled.  The boys thought an impromptu game of poker might sate our need for something macho to do.

I’m clearly not the right guy to give advice, being that I’ve only played a total of 8 rounds in my life, but the one tip I’ve found that really makes my position stronger is to only have three types of bet:

1. The check or call (you don’t always have to spend money)
2. The silo bet (is strong but doesn’t require any time or thinking to count)
3. The all-in

By limiting my plays to these three types of bet my opponents don’t have the opportunity to examine my reactions.  I know that I’m either going to call, push a silo or push all-in.  If I have to decide how much to bet and then worry about what kind of message I’m sending whether I’m too high or too low I’m clearly going to lose.  I would be out of my element in a hurry.  I’ve found that my opponents really get no read on my betting and I’ve really only been beaten by poor cards or bad rivers.

I also don’t think that revealing my methods will hurt me in the future.  The guys I play against don’t really get out (on the Internet) much.  Besides, this tip can’t help you read my cards or my face.  I’ve watched a fair amount of WSOP and celebrity poker on TV but I will never play enough poker to know, or care, what a good or bad bet is.  I have a hard enough time remembering the blinds and what beats what.

Best of luck to everyone not at my table!

I write this blog post for and about my dad.  He may not read it right away (or ever) but there are some things I think he should know.

I was gassing up my truck this morning to the tune of a small country’s GDP when I caught a whiff of the fumes.  I was instantly transported back to every summer Sunday morning of my youth, filling up the boat.  There was an hour every Sunday morning when my dad and I would head down to the boat before everyone else to get ‘er ready.  We’d take the top down, stow the life jackets and the cooler, and then we’d take it around to gas up.

As a bit of an aside, there really isn’t anything else like Georgian Bay at 8 or 9 in the morning in the summer.  It’s glass calm, the sun is just coming up and you can feel the heat of it on your skin but it’s not hot yet, it’s quiet, so quiet, and then there’s that smell.  The sickly sweet fumes of gas and the Bay mixed together.  It’s not unlike an elixir of youth - or joy.  I think it is actually impossible to be upset or worried about something when you’re down at the dock, before the crowd, on the Bay.  Lesley, when I go, just spread my ashes somewhere down the South Channel.

With gas prices heading through the stratosphere I imagine that pleasure boating will leave the realm of the middle-class to be enjoyed only by the uber-rich.  That’s a real shame.  I know I’m not the only guy out there who spent his formative years bonding with his dad over the fumes of an old Starcraft.  Like most guys, my dad didn’t try to teach me anything about life when we were alone, that kind of information you had to glean from his actions and from eavesdropping at parties when I was supposed to be asleep hours ago.  No, the stuff I learned from him in the early mornings was more about him and the kind of father that I wanted to be.  He’d sit in the back of the boat, being my first mate.  He’d wince when I came in too fast in the early years.  He’d comment about my wake (it was always too big but I just couldn’t drive that slow).  But in the end, he always let me take the lead, make my own mistakes, and learn on my own.

In the later years he’d just open a book and read until we got to the dock.  He’d follow my instructions and then let me run the show for the whole day’s boating.  Everyone knew that I was running the boat.  I know he was paying attention though because he’d never fail to thank me at the end of the day for such a good boat ride.  Imagine that, thanking me when it should have been me thanking him.  As much as I liked driving the boat I think the thank you at the end of the day was even better.

I often think about the years ahead and how I’d love to move my parents closer to me and my family.  I don’t get very far before I think about Georgian Bay and what it has meant to me, my dad, and my family in general.  I was raised on the Bay.  I proposed to Lesley on the Bay.  I think I’m about as close to it as a man can be to a body of water.  The thing is that my dad was there for all of it.  So is it really the Bay that I love?

Happy Father’s Day, Big Isi (the BBP).

I picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged at a book swap for 25 cents.  The paperback was old enough that the price on the cover said 95 cents.  I thought I had heard of the title before and there was a faint Spideysense tingling that it was important.  I started to read it an knew immediately that it was something I would remember forever.

(more…)

Well the day has finally come.  El-Steve-o has just finished announcing the specs and release details of the iPhone 3G.  I’m going to get one.  On July 11, that is.  The Canadian Apple store lists it here and it’s Where To Buy link shows Rogers and Fido as the two providers.  I think all of the sites are currently being bombarded.

Before you start flaming me with why other phones are better and that iTunes sucks you have to stop for a minute and examine the facts:

• I don’t currently have a cell phone
• I have a ton of iTunes-managed music, podcasts and video
• I need push email for my business
• I need mobile Internet access for my business

This device has all of those features in one package.  The fact that it carries a maximum price of $299 USD (for the 16GB model) makes it even sweeter.

The only question of affordability now will be the service plan.  We all know that Rogers is the only carrier currently capable of 3G, and that the 3G coverage isn’t even that great yet in Canada, but Mr. Jobs has pushed his ideal of availability to other carriers in other countries before.  Here’s hoping that he does so in Canada as well.

While Apple didn’t fully comply with my list of must haves (32GB would have allowed me to fit all of my tunes) they did run down a pretty good list of functions and added value features.  You can read about Steve’s keynote speech at WWDC08 over at Engadget.com.

Hopefully Rogers will extend their Vision network to include the Belleville area - Prince Edward County specifically.  I won’t hold my breath.